Category : Video Production

HOW TO: Enhance Your Online Presence with Video

Posted by Zachary Sniderman at 1:56 pm

Video is a tricky spot for most blogs and personal sites, especially when that video is meant to represent you. While everyone likes to watch videos (just look at the exponential growth and popularity of YouTube), it’s a little more difficult to create, edit and host your own videos. This isn’t to say incorporating a video into your online presence is an impossible feat, but to do it properly requires some digital finesse and forethought.

Technically speaking, simply making a video is pretty easy. Hit the record button, stand in front of the camera, turn the lights on and say something. Instant video. Unfortunately, that alone won’t make it a good video.

Video is about content and production: What’s in it, and how it’s presented. For most personal blogs, it’s more important to provide great content (some of the most popular viral videos have some of the shoddiest production values), but much depends on what you want your video to accomplish. Is it an online resume? Clips of your work? Or just something funny for your audience to chew on?

Below we’ve got some quick tips on how to enhance your online presence with video.

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Utilize Video Resumes and Introductions

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Using video resumes and introductions is a great way to make a first impression. It’s also a great way to shoot yourself in the foot. You could be (and probably are) intelligent, charismatic, ambitious, and attractive, and thankfully, a good video will help you stand out. But beware, a bad video could hide your best characteristics.

Most sites give general, but useful tips on how to set yourself up for success if you’re going to create a video resume. Be organized, dress professionally, speak clearly — all things your parents told you to do and all things you would do in a real interview. The tips are general because you need to tailor your resume, and video, for each job application.

A video introduction, a brief video embedded into your homepage, uses many of the same concepts. It is intended, however, to give a general impression of who you are: Your motivations, passions, and what readers can expect from your site. If someone clicks on your video, it’s because they want to see you, the person behind the site.

Some of the most important tips for these personal videos are: Keep your video to no more than two minutes, find a space where you feel comfortable filming, and avoid having too much clutter in the shot — we want to see you. Lastly, know what you’re going to say and what you want your audience to get out of the video.

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Supply Sample Clips

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Adding clips of your previous work is perhaps most useful if you have a profession that requires you to be in front of or behind a video camera. Including these clips can be a good way to connect with your readers by showing them real samples of what you do.

The biggest obstacle is usually getting over the fear that people will hate your work. It’s a legitimate, but often unwarranted concern. If you’re a pro, odds are you’ve already built out a video section on your site. For amateurs, think of your clips as a great way to get crowdsourced feedback.

Add a comments section below your videos, and encourage responses to your work. You’ll find that readers will often give good criticism if you ask for it in a courteous and honest way. Of course, there will always be trolls. But odds are high that you’ll get more useful feedback than people calling you a n00b.

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Curate Videos from around the Web

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Aggregating videos can show your expertise or interest in a specific field, in much the same way that aggregating news stories can. Posting a selection of videos from the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, for example, can show readers your interest in classical music, collaborative arts, or the intersection between classic arts and new technologies. However, if those are your interests and you post random fail vids and cute cats, your readers might not get a good sense of who you are.

Anything you post on your blog or personal site is a representation of who you are. Video’s can be a great way to show your personality, previous work, or interests, but require the same patience as any other medium (you wouldn’t post a blurry or embarrassing profile pic, right?).

Your best bet is to think of video as an extension of your portfolio, a video cover letter where you can share a little bit of who you are. It’s certainly not required, but a video done well can do a lot to enhance your online presence.

Let us know how you are using online video to showcase your work or interests in the comments below.

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Series supported by Gillette

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Robot Priest Marries Couple in Japan [VIDEO]

Posted by Stan Schroeder at 6:15 am

Procedurally, the ceremony of marriage is a very linear affair. The priest says some things, then the groom and bride say some things, kisses are exchanged, and the couple is married.

Is it odd, then, that Satoko Inoue and Tomohiro Shibata decided to employ a robot called i-Fairy to marry them? Now, perhaps; but in a couple of years, especially in Japan which is already home to 800,000 industrial robots, it might become a regular occurrence.

The bride, Inoue, works for Kokoro Ltd, the company that makes the i-Fairy, a robot usually employed as a museum guide. The husband, Shibata, was a client of the company, so in a way, the robot brought them together. “It’s true that robots are what caused us to first begin going out, and as suggested by my wife, we decided that we wanted to try this sort of wedding,” Shibata said.

All it took was new software, and the robot presided over the marriage without problems, as you can see in the video below. So much for robots not understanding the meaning of love.

Tags: japan, marriage, Robot, tech

The Ugliest / Worst Web Sites of 2009

Posted by Vincent Flanders at 7:44 am

Overall, 2009 was a much worse year for web design than I ever expected. On the other hand, there are a lot more web sites today than back in 1996 when I started WPTS. On a percentage basis, we might be improving.

A lot of non-profit organizations need to fix their web sites. There’s more at stake with a non-profit web site and they have more responsibility to “get it right.”

Ugliest / Worst Business Web Sites of 2009, But You Can Learn Something From Them

Ugliest / Worst Business Web Sites of 2009

Ugliest / Worst Business Web Sites to Navigate in 2009

Ugliest / Worst Web Sites of 2009: Honorary Winners

Ugliest / Worst Over The Top Web Sites of 2009

Ugliest / Worst Non-Profit Web Sites of 2009

Post from: Web Pages That Suck — Daily Sucker

The Ugliest / Worst Web Sites of 2009 – The Final Lists

PARTNERS + simons — The Daily Sucker for Thur, Dec 31, 2009

Posted by Vincent Flanders at 8:37 am

PARTNERS + simons

Submitter’s comments: Static image so important, they had to hide the navigation. Never had to ‘drag’ a hidden nav-bar open before.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: What’s worse is that the hidden navigation doesn’t always show up. It didn’t show up on my IE 7, but it did on IE8. Here are some BrowserCam screen shots that show the hidden navigation doesn’t always show up.

PARTNERS + simons

Post from: Web Pages That Suck — Daily Sucker

PARTNERS + simons — The Daily Sucker for Thursday, December 31, 2009

Danneman Signs — Daily Sucker for Wed, Dec 30, 2009

Posted by Vincent Flanders at 4:59 am

Danneman Signs

Submitter’s comments: Yikes!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: What drives me stark raving crazy is the fact that I can’t read some of the text. Why? Because there’s not enough contrast.

Does anyone with two working eyes ever look at their pages and notice that the text is impossible/hard to read?

Danneman Signs

Post from: Web Pages That Suck — Daily Sucker

Danneman Signs — The Daily Sucker for Wednesday, December 30, 2009

My Social Links of Interest For Dec 2009

Posted by Vincent Flanders at 4:08 am

Article: “10 signs you don’t understand web analytics” – http://bit.ly/7OXVUm

Post from: Web Pages That Suck — Daily Sucker

My Social Networking Links of Interest on December 29, 2009 at 1:34 am

DPGraph -The Daily Sucker for Monday, December 21, 2009

Posted by Vincent Flanders at 5:19 am

DPGraph

Submitter’s comments: I was searching the web for some assembly language information and I “crossed eyes” with this site. Since then I cannot type properly, I’ve grown a third ear and my retina is starting to decay <grin>.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Ironically, the site has found a good use for animated images — to show off their 3D graphing software. Unfortunately, they couldn’t leave well enough alone and had to use an animated GIF background. This takes the site from being sloppy to Over the Top.

All they have to do to improve the site and raise it to the level of mediocre is just remove the animated background. I just changed one HTML statement and made the site infinitely better. (In case they remove the background image, here’s a screen shot of the original page.)

DPGraph

Post from: Web Pages That Suck — Daily Sucker

DPGraph -The Daily Sucker for Monday, December 21, 2009